


the burnt smell of pepsi cola in a lunch room gone to rot

by booooin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga), Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Psychologists & Psychiatrists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booooin/pseuds/booooin
Summary: Remix fic of Things Fall Apart by Her Sweetness, which was one of my favorites from 2007, where Ryou is in a mental institution, Seto is his doctor, and someone keeps calling Ryou Sugar.





	the burnt smell of pepsi cola in a lunch room gone to rot

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Things Fall Apart](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/448754) by Her Sweetness. 



> I was talking to someone about this fic today, read it again, and was reminiscing so I remixed it. It’s a spur of the moment thing and I did it really to encourage people to read Her Sweetness and some of the old fic out there that is our collective memory <3

“Hello Doctor Seto Kaiba.” The way he spelled it out, _dawk-ter_ , made satire where there wasn’t any.

“Don’t say my whole name. It’s not necessary. I told you that.”

“What shall we talk about today, _dawk-ter_?”

“We can talk about whatever you want.”

“I can’t think of anything. We have too much time.”

They were on the clock and this was the seventh conversation Seto had that day, the only one Ryou had all week. “You know, if you keep thinking of our time here as an hour that needs to be filled, you’ll never improve.”

“What if my mind is a complete blank?”

That would make sense, becaus lithium did that to a person.

“There’s always something on the human mind.”

“What makes you think I’m human?”

“Our tests have concluded that you’re human.”

“Are you testing me?”

“If you want, I’ll tell the nurses that you complained.”

“They’re annoying.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t mean it.

“I just don’t like people seeing me naked.”

“It’s for a medical purpose. They’re trained to be nonjudgmental. It’s not like they’re looking at you with any sexual desire.”

“How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That they’re not looking at me with sexual desire.”

“I know because they’re professionals.”

“You’re a professional and you still have sexual desire.”

“Yes, but not in the workplace.”

“Why not? We’re all humans here, aren’t we?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

In between sessions, the voice in Ryou’s head tells him:

 _He’s looking at you, they’re all looking at you, Sugar. Sexual desire is on their breath and if you don’t see it then you’re even more of an idiot than I thought you are. I know and_ you _know, Sugar, that your daddy didn’t love you right so you’ve got all these repressed_ urges _and think about what it would be like to be fucked at least twice daily. Your mind is like the lip of a hot drink gone cold and it leaves these smears across the surface that really look like human faces if you don’t look at them too much but not at all when you take the time to let_ them _see_ you _. We’re got all the time in the world, Sugar, so let me tell you a real story and, the next time you listen to that man, you’re going to remember the burnt smell of pepsi cola in a lunch room gone to rot._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ryou wakes up and answers to Death first.

おはよう, he says and then again out loud and again louder until Death tells him:

i’m here.

Ryou remembers holding two swords, blindfold on, trapped between the rays of the moon. There was something his gut had to tell him and then he woke up.

what did mr. doctor sir say

“He asked me some questions but it was nothing I couldn’t take. I passed the time. Will you help me, if he asks me something I don’t know the answer to?”

you’re trouble, aren’t you

“I don’t know.”

Death is his daddy and holds him like a madonna. Ryou relishes in these moments.

sugar, what do you think i need you for

Sometimes, the voice in Ryou’s head doesn’t sound a thing like death and he gets very out of breath until he remembers to take a breath that makes him feel like falling over with the great force of air.

“I’m— I’m unsure— I really don’t know. I— I don’t know how I got here and I-I don’t know...”

_panic!_

there, there sugar

“I don’t like the bars,” says Ryou and the guard glares at him.

they’re like your mind, sugar close your eyes and i’ll take you somewhere else

Breath held, Ryou fell still and waited for Death to feel him up, to jerk him off, to hold him down.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The kid sat cross legged on a plastic chair, staring at Seto.

“This is Yugi Motou, Ryou. Do you know him? He went to your school before his life ended."

Seto was an asshole shrink. He subscribed to the philosophy that life was for those who were capable of just getting over it and made the big bucks committing criminals to the madhouse where they would generate the private corporation that controlled the psychiatric facility hundreds of thousands of dollars in income every quarter.

It wasn’t like his colleagues were any more refined. Radic truly didn’t give a shit and Dillon was a spaz.

“No, I don’t know him,” the kid said, when Seto knew personally that they’d been in the same class for three years. Ryou Bakura, the kid, who was crazy, was a shit liar.

"What about her? Anzu Mazaki. This girl was even in your class. She died the day before Yugi Motou."

“Why am I being asked this?”

Because, as Seto understood it, there were currently two sets of parents pressing charges on one seventeen year old boy and he’d already been quoted by the viral news sites as having a handle on this issue which had spooked the public enough to conjure up urban myths creepy enough to rival the Nevada-tan incidents.

Because Radic hadn’t wanted to take this shitty assignment and Seto didn’t have the seniority to dispute.

“I’d like to help if I can,” the little shit had the audacity to say. Seto was about to prescribe him a combination of mood altering pills that would have him wetting himself at night.

Ryou Bakura gave him, and everyone else, the creeps. He smiled a beat too late and said things in a way that made Seto think that he’d mulled them over in his head too long to be authentic. He performed insanity like a crazy person who was self aware, and Seto’s training let him know that there were no crazy people who were self aware.

“I can’t remember that girl,” Ryou Bakura said. “I don’t really pay attention to anyone at school. Sorry.”

He didn’t go to school anymore. He spent his days barefoot in a cushioned room. When Seto wanted to punish him they pulled his head into a hood and his arms into a straight jacket.

“What about this young man? He didn’t go to your school.”

Ryou’s face collapsed but his demeanor did not. Crying, Ryou told Seto, “No, I’m sorry. He doesn’t ring a bell” in that voice that would not compromise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The two guards, Dillon and Dylan, watch Ryou, alone, bounce up and down on his bed in a grostesque satire of sex, half dressed, and eyes shut in ecstasy.

“That’s disgusting,” Dylan says.

Back from a dinner break, Dillon put his feet up and sucks cola from a can. “Think he’s lonely?”

“It’s eight a clock already. Doesn’t he usually stop by now?”

“Maybe his invisible lover’s feeling extra frisky today. Took his time with the foreplay.”

Dylan watches the screen, mouth bent downward. “It’s disgusting,” he said again.

Dillon laughs like the fizz in pop. Neither of them can smell the sex through the screen.


End file.
